Setting new benchmarks in investment banking efficiency at Degroof Petercam

Belgian-rooted and backed by over 150 years of trust

Degroof Petercam is a go-to investment house for unbiased, client-focused financial decisions. The firm's investment banking arm serves corporates, investors, and institutions with services ranging from financing guidance to seamless securities transactions.

Alexander Aerts is one of the banks’ Investment Banking Vice Presidents.

“Bank of Petercam, it was founded in in 1871. More than 150 years old, it’s mostly known for its private banking in Belgium - that's the real main activity of the bank – but besides that, we also have asset management and investment banking. Currently, there are five presidents within the team, the bridge between the more senior people - the managing partners - and the juniors, overlooking the associate and analysts within the team,” says Alexander.

“Passions outside of the working environment?  For sure, my family. If I still have some spare time, I like to go for a for a bike ride; the more tranquil uphill spaces, especially here in the south of Brussels, really helps me to clear my mind – set the focus, helps you think or figure out some issues that that you're also running on your day-to-day job,” he says.

Laurent Clerbois also works at Degroof Petercam as an Investment Banking Senior Associate.

“The reason why you should work with Bank Degroof Petercam is very simple. We're one of the leading advisors in Belgium, focusing on the mid cap segment. We are one of the most active, if not the most active one this year. We focus not only on M and A, we also offer a wide range of services going from capital markets, both in the equity and the debt side. We also offer a lot of advisory services,” says Laurent. 

“Our team is not limited to Brussels. We have a team of forty-five people – also based in in Paris – where we have a lot of sector expertise, and we are also part of an international network called IMap, who we can rely at every moment. So we have international experts all over the world, and I think that's really a differentiator compared to our competitors in Belgium.”
 

"Deals have changed"

“Deals have certainly changed. Technology is becoming more and more part of the job,” says Alexander. “Ansarada has always been pushing the innovation forward. Done recently with the implementation of the last few years of the Workflow tool, being able to start early on in the process of your M&A deal in the preparation phase – already having your clients involved in uploading and not doing the work twice.”

“And then also recently with the redaction tool with the AI pattern system. The keywords that you can put in there, you can redact 100+ documents at the same time. One of our interns recently did six or seven hundred documents in just a couple of minutes - in the past, that's maybe a couple of days of work. That's huge amount of time saved. It’s been really a game changer for us.”